"The Arrowhead" and "Baron" Suggestions

[Egon the Monkey]

Sell single gust arrows. Those are one of the few ammo types it's cost-effective to buy, but they're expensive to have to buy a stack of 10 at 420 gp for what is essentially a reserve item. Could we get single ones at 42 GP instead? (the same price per shot)

Also, could the Bonecrusher arrows be made cheaper, as since there's no longbow or shortbow with AB bonus or AB vs Undead, that's the only slightly effective way to fight Risers with a bow.  Over 1000 gold for a full load is very expensive, since the Piercing Immunity and DR combined will see off much of the dmg even so. Same goes for the Blessed Bolts, but that's just because they're wacky expensive, there's a couple of good crossbows to beat Riser DR.

Really that shop should be doing a roaring trade in essential shooter consumables that PCs don't craft., and if it's not, the pricing's amiss. The bows and some ammo's certainly tempting, but the rest, less so.

[ExileStrife]

For every reason ever said before, superior ranged stuff is not going to become suddenly better and more affordable.  Cheap gust arrows?  Sweet Jesus.  You realize that's basically an AoE stun/hold that you can fire off like 3 times per round with rapid-shot?  Skeletons are supposed to have piercing resistance and beating is supposed to be hard, not easy.  If everyone had simple access to stuff like this, then what would the point be?

[Egon the Monkey]

I didn't suggest it cheaper. Just not in 10 stack minimum. The price is good, and I thought the idea was an expensive reserve item, carrying 1-2. A stack of 10 goes for 419 gold. Selling single ones at 42 gold is the same price, and makes them more appealing to PCs who might be able to afford a few but not 10. Like with tangelbags. It is a very good item and one that does a lot to give archers more use, I was only suggesting selling them in smaller stacks.

Beating Nightriser DR/DI isn't hard for any class with access to good blunt weapons or Magic weapon loot though. You can do it easily with a couple of mace drops, beat the DR only with a crossbow or MWed spear/rapier/other piercing weapon. Trouble is that ammo is burned up quickly. A MW trinket worth 50 gold will put you in the clear for 10 min. 5 arrows at the same price will last a couple of rounds. I'm not saying "ranged PCs should get it easy", but they should face the same costs to get around the problem as everyone else. I also get rather bemused by shops that sell gear nobody buys. It doesn't feel like a IG business but a showcase of what you COULD have.

[ExileStrife]

There are many, many things to consider, like the sudden effect of having each and every character have 5 AoE holds that they can use to smash our current quests, but I'm going to focus on the "being special" case.

Things are sold like that for a purpose.  Larger stacks with a higher price point make purchasing the item more significant, making the item more significant in the process.  If things we're cheap and available in convienent amounts, everyone would easily be able to deck themselves out in the optimal configuration of gear, making everything boring.

Having shops that sell unusual things that nobody seems to buy is and has always been a good thing.  Same reason why fancy customization is expensive.  Same reason why dyes are expensive.

There will always be the optimal, ideal set of equipment and consumables that's the cheapest and easiest to acquire, and that's fine, even if it's strong.  It's perfectly acceptable to put yourself on cruise control and stock up like that.  However, when you want to go the extra mile, there needs to be a way to distinguish yourself that isn't easy for everyone else.

All these unattractive, expensive, costly, not-as-good-as-this-other-thing, strange, weird, unique items fulfil that role.

This makes it easy to spot and see, "wow, that PC is being interesting and cool and is doing something for flavor" even if it's not 100% optimal or cost-effective.  9 out of the 10 players playing some sneaky rouge sneak attacker or whatever tend to use the same, ideal, optimal, best shortsword available with +1d4 damage or whatever it happens to be.  It's that 1-out-of-10-player that makes us go, "woah, sweet," when we pop open their inventory and see them wielding some kind of "extra pointy, extra shady" dagger with maybe just +1 damage, even though we know they've had access to many better things.  It also invokes that same "sweet" response when we see people buy a cool stack of arrows that might cost a lot but fit their concept well, even when there are better things they could be buying, for example.

When everyone has easy access to everything "cool," it just makes it all the same in the end and takes away that cool factor.  For instance, there are plenty of people that remember the Stouthearts...a player faction that for reasons I could understand and others I couldn't grew very large and stuck around for a long time.  One "sweet" thing they did do, however, was come up and maintain a custom uniform for everyone, and this was before it was easy to customize armor or have faction outfits.  There was plenty of other better fullplate out there, but most players in the faction chose to ignore that and stick with their silly little mundane uniform that they painstakingly produced and maintained.  That was cool.  I think it is a real loss that we'll never quite have that again because we've since introduced a lot of tools and systems to make that whole process much easier and accessable.

While there are other balance reasons which could work their way into your whole other comment about beating DR with arrows, I think many of these same reasons above apply.  Yes, it's true that some classes and builds have easy means to beat piercing DR, but that keeps things fresh and unique.  If everyone under the sun had an easy method to beat piercing DR, then what's the point?  This is a game where just about everything has advantages and disadvantages.  That lets people shine in some situations and lets them stay back in others.  "Fixing" somebody's disadvantage removes someone else's advantage, and in the end you'll just have a boring game.

[Egon the Monkey]

Thanks for that explanation, Exile. That makes a lot of sense actually.